Tethering may yet come to Palm Pre...Just wait for Verizon

Apparently Palm is perfectly fine with cracking open the Pre and enabling tethering, but the smartphone company doesn't think Sprint will be too keen on the idea.

In the Pre Developer Wiki, the subsection dedicated to tethering has been pulled down at Palm's request, because "any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki."

While there is no plan yet from Sprint that will allow the Pre to be tethered (used as a 3G modem for a PC), this has not yet proven to be a detriment to device sales in the United States, as most of its competitors cannot be tethered either. The iPhone 3G S, which was launched just days after the Pre, has the ability to be tethered but AT&T is currently blocking the feature for "testing." Google pulled tethering apps from the Android Market last April, which knocks T-Mobile's G1 out of the competition.

The only carrier-exclusive touchphone that is allowed to be used as a tethered modem is the BlackBerry Storm, but that fact should not lure customers away from the Pre. Instead, it may end up drawing prospective customers away from Sprint.

Not only does Verizon let all of RIM's BlackBerrys be tethered when subscribers pay for the Broadband Connect package, but the network operator also lets all of Palm's devices do the same. So the Verizon Pre that CEO Lowell McAdam mentioned in late May could be a step above the Sprint Pre simply by the virtue of its tetherability.